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Essay: The Diversity of Faith
Oct. 28th, 2009 08:36 pmContinuing the topic of faith, here's the third part of my 4-part essay, which I've just translated.
The Diversity of Faith
In order to answer the question "why do we believe?", we should make a distinction between the various nuances of the act of believing. Of course, being reasonable people, who acknowledge the groundlessness of faith as a source of knowledge, the question actually is: "why do believers believe?" From the point of view of the thinking individual, believers could be generally put into two groups:
1. Those who believe in irrational assertions but do not have the pretense that their attitude to these assertions is necessarily a source of knowledge about the world. This group includes those individuals who often use phrases such as "I believe in friendship", "I believe in love", "I believe in good"... even "I believe in destiny". In fact, these phrases express hope in the respective subject, and when such an individual says "I believe in justice", they actually express their wish to live in a world predominantly ruled by justice. There is nothing abnormal in such a construct, it is just that "faith" here has a completely different meaning from that in the next group.
2. Group two includes those who accept unproven and/or unprovable assertions as truth, and who have the pretense that these assertions are part of the objective reality. Such assertions could be for example "the elementary particles are strings", "extra-terrestrials exist", "there is a small tea-pot currently orbiting around the Sun, just between Mars and Jupiter", or "Jesus Christ was born to a virgin and after we die he will decide whether our souls deserve to go to Hell or Heaven", and so on.
( The Diversity of Faith )
The present essay (which is part of a series of essays) primarily examines the religious belief in stable self-sufficient and self-defined doctrines such as the latter, which however have only a remote relation to reality, no matter how much they have been promoted as absolutely veracious. It is the reasons for the emergence of this type of faith that will be discussed in the next part.
The Diversity of Faith
In order to answer the question "why do we believe?", we should make a distinction between the various nuances of the act of believing. Of course, being reasonable people, who acknowledge the groundlessness of faith as a source of knowledge, the question actually is: "why do believers believe?" From the point of view of the thinking individual, believers could be generally put into two groups:
1. Those who believe in irrational assertions but do not have the pretense that their attitude to these assertions is necessarily a source of knowledge about the world. This group includes those individuals who often use phrases such as "I believe in friendship", "I believe in love", "I believe in good"... even "I believe in destiny". In fact, these phrases express hope in the respective subject, and when such an individual says "I believe in justice", they actually express their wish to live in a world predominantly ruled by justice. There is nothing abnormal in such a construct, it is just that "faith" here has a completely different meaning from that in the next group.
2. Group two includes those who accept unproven and/or unprovable assertions as truth, and who have the pretense that these assertions are part of the objective reality. Such assertions could be for example "the elementary particles are strings", "extra-terrestrials exist", "there is a small tea-pot currently orbiting around the Sun, just between Mars and Jupiter", or "Jesus Christ was born to a virgin and after we die he will decide whether our souls deserve to go to Hell or Heaven", and so on.
( The Diversity of Faith )
The present essay (which is part of a series of essays) primarily examines the religious belief in stable self-sufficient and self-defined doctrines such as the latter, which however have only a remote relation to reality, no matter how much they have been promoted as absolutely veracious. It is the reasons for the emergence of this type of faith that will be discussed in the next part.
